Here’s a shot from the start of the film roll.

Here’s one about 6 frames in, taken a day later.

A similar thing happened with a roll that sat for a couple of years (!) from the first shot taken, to eventual development a few weeks ago. One of the first frames:

A shot from the end of the roll (note that the blurriness here isn’t grain, it’s camera shake because I accidentally switched the Holga to bulb mode):

A (slightly less expired) roll of black and white had the opposite progression. Here’s a shot taken last November:

Followed by one shot in January:

My theory about the color film is that the outer layers of the roll, which are used first, had more exposure to heat and thus more color effects. I don’t know why the black and white roll seems to get grainier toward the end, though. It only sat in the camera for a couple of months, and wasn’t exposed to any extreme temperature changes in the meantime. Just a fluke, perhaps?

Things you don’t learn about photography when you only do digital: it’s sort of like Schrödinger’s Cat.

I’ve been getting some nice results with the Fade to Black film in my SX-70, though. And Lucas dug up a OneStep camera for me, so when they start making 600 film again I’ll have three different Polaroid cameras to play with.

It’s fun when it works.

A few minutes after taking the photos.

About an hour later.

The first photo, a day later. You can just barely see the remains of the image. This one is now taped inside a window, trying the suggestion that Fade to Black photos can be bleached out to reveal more of the image again.

The second photo, finished. This one I peeled open and let dry for about a day before taping it back together and scanning the image. The front image and the back foil don’t quite lay flat now, giving the image the appearance of depth. It’s a neat effect, and one I’d like to play with more. Maybe I could reassemble the photo with some sort of spacer keeping the layers apart?

I really love the colors of this film. It’s a bit more work to capture the result at any point in the development, and if you open the photo to stop the development process, that’s it, no going back. But I like that photography can still be this hands-on, messy thing, not completely measured and precise. It feels good to muck around and see what happens.

2. Squint at the included directions for attaching your new Polaroid back to the Holga camera. Squint even more at the directions for loading the film. Make a guess as to what the photos are indicating, and fiddle with it until everything appears to be in place.

3. Take a picture of your cat in what you hope is bright enough light for the film ISO. Pull the photo out of the camera in a complicated process involving a little paper leader strip, and a film door that’s hard to pry open even with fingernails.

4. Remember that using peel-apart film probably means that there’s an optimal length of time to let it develop before opening, and fumble for the film box to find out what that is. Glance at the time. Try to guess how long it’s been since you removed the film from the camera. Give up and open it a minute later.

5. Wonder why there is no cat in this photo.

6. Decide that low light levels are probably the culprit, and sprint outside as soon as the gloomy winter weather breaks into sunshine.

7. Fail to pull the film out smoothly, feeding it instead into the little slot the paper tabs (which tell you what number print you’re on) are supposed to come out of. Open the camera to clear the jam, crossing your fingers you haven’t exposed the entire film pack to light.

8. Hope that aggressive cropping will be enough to keep the picture from being a complete waste.

9. Spend some time reading Flickr forum threads for tips. Decide that you’ll just try to get over the minimum development time and not worry after that, since it’s the only way you’re going to be able to take pictures outside (needing to let the opened prints dry flat on a clean surface is kinda limiting).

10. Go outside and take more pictures.

11. Conclude that no amount of wishful thinking will convert “bright overcast” into “direct sunlight”.

12. Watch the weather forecast anxiously, hoping for actual sunshine to occur.

13. Run outside during the next available sunbreak. Finish off the pack of film.

14. Admire the imperfect, unexpected results.

We had about fifteen people come out for Calagator‘s 2nd birthday party at Bailey’s on Friday night. Low-key, casual meetup, with brownies from Joe Cohen, lemon bars I made with the roadtrip lemons, plenty of beer, and food from the taqueria across the street. I’m sad that Igal, who has been instrumental in keeping Calagator going, was sick and couldn’t be there with us.

On Saturday, about 60 people met up at NedSpace for the first-ever CrisisCampPDX, a quickly-organized branch of a project that’s been bringing people together around the world to provide support for relief efforts in Haiti. This wasn’t just the regular Portland tech scene at work—we had a wide range of participants, from developers, to GIS specialists, to French and Creole speakers, to people who helped with data entry and sorting. I was really impressed with the energy and focus everyone brought to this work day. I helped with a hospital data project using Sahana, a disaster-management system. We hit a few bumps as people tried to get up to speed on different projects, but on the whole I was really impressed with how much we were able to do, for such a distributed set of projects.

And now for something completely different.

I have a small but growing collection of cameras, which has now expanded to include some Polaroid equipment. The middle of winter in the Pacific Northwest is not the best time to be running around shooting ISO 100 film, but I did manage to get a few shots off last week with my new SX-70 Sonar camera. (This is not the only new camera from the last couple of weeks, but you’ll have to wait to hear about the rest.)

You may be wondering, “didn’t Polaroid stop making instant film a while back? Why would you pick that up now?”. There’s a group known as The Impossible Project which has spent the last year and change developing new instant film for Polaroid camera formats, and they’re expected to release the results of that work next month. So I just have to pace myself with my existing film supply for a few weeks.

Last but not least, I updated the blog’s header with a new photo, from the road trip. Click through and have a look if you’re using an RSS reader to view this. I have a habit of leaving the header picture the same for long periods of time, but once in a while the blog design changes, and there’s often new links in the sidebar to check out, so it’s worth taking a peek.

If you are even slightly interested in seeing animated works from around the world, I encourage you to pick up tickets to at least one screening (I think most events are $10). Lucas and I were both really impressed with the first night’s lineup, and there are some great feature-length works, lectures, and other events on the schedule.

I’ll post more when I’m more awake and sober (opening night == champagne. with blue curaçao. mmm and oof and the same time.)

Pinhole:

Holga:

See my page on Flickr for more.

I have one more unused disposable camera to be used for pinhole photos sitting on the shelf. I think my original plan was to do a set of yarn still life pictures, but I must have been distracted by another project.

For the Holga, I have a five pack of 100 speed film still to use (if it ever quits raining) and another roll of tri-x black & white, plus a couple of shots left on the roll still in the camera, so you will definitely be seeing more from that one. I had the first two rolls developed and scanned at Quick Stop Photo downtown, and I’m actually pretty disappointed with the result. There’s a ton of scanner noise in the pictures, little red and yellow specks. So I went ahead and ordered a photo scanner to do the rest myself (I’d been thinking about getting a flat-bed scanner anyhow, and there seem to be some decent models with negative scanning options these days). If the scans suck, I’d rather pay less per roll and have it be my fault.

I’m also starting to think it’s about time I learned to process my own b&w film. I’ve done my own prints before, and I don’t think this is any more complicated. I’d kind of like to find someone who could walk me through it the first time, though, so I don’t make any obvious mistakes (if any Portland locals reading this qualify…)

Tags: photography, holga, pinhole, film